"Fostering Discipline" is a manual to be used in education for families who provide service to foster children. It assumes that the participants in the class have had prior instruction in their roles as foster parents, the purposes of foster care, the reasons why children are in care and their relationship with the agency. This instructor's…

Students nearing high school graduation need more than the skills and information given them in the past 12 years; they also need to know "how" to learn. The Senior Seminar, which is a program offering a semester of interdisciplinary experiential learning, teaches students to become independent, self-directed learners by first presenting…

After discussing the controversies surrounding attempts at "external" performance contracting--agreements negotiated between local educational authorities and private educational firms--this document describes five "local" programs--agreements negotiated between a local educational authority and its own teachers--involving nine school districts.…

Thirty-four high-risk students at Essex Community College (Maryland) were evaluated on self-concept growth as shown through pre- and post-tests on the Tennessee Self Concept Scale (TSCS), self-concept as shown through an open-ended questionnaire, and improvement in college grade point average (GPA), after working in a self goal-setting learning…

Discussion of the nature of student-teacher contracts pertaining to academic work to be performed by the student and evaluated by the teacher covers a wide range of related issues in this article. The nature of contracts, evaluation procedures, instructional materials, community attitudes, and the individualization of instruction are commented on…

Attitudes of the superintendents and school board officials of 25 major cities concerning the operation of their schools were determined. In lengthy discussions, these officials observed that big city schools need massive financial assistance from State and Federal governments, since the local property tax as a base is inadequate, and because the…

This 756-entry bibliography was prompted by the Serrano decision of the California Supreme Court in August 1971. The items are drawn from the literature on public administration, law, education, and State and local government since 1965. Items are organized under "Inequality of Educational Opportunity,""Financing of Local Public…

A report on the Michigan project in performance contracting is presented. In contrast to the Office of Economic Opportunity announcement that performance contracting is a failure, the Michigan program has been successful in the initial stage of a major experiment (Texarkana Project). The state legislature has appropriated $22.5 million for…

This report is distilled from Rand's findings in previously reported research and from new research. It is addressed to school board members, administrators, and other educational decisionmakers who may be contemplating a performance contracting program. The guide follows the life cycle of a project and identifies the three major phases as…

Educational accountability is treated as a philosophy and as a means of introducing system into an educational enterprise. The philosophy of accountability is discussed as to the demand for accountability, the possibility of using accountability as a political tool, the promise made by accountability and whether the promise can be kept, difficult…

A distinction among evaluation, measurement and reports of terminal behavior is presented. For the purposes of evaluation, any response to a speech performance provides useful feedback to the communicator. In addition to the teacher's evaluation of the performance against "established standards", it is argued that a teacher's subjective responses…

Based upon 1969-70 ESEA Title I entitlements, this report represents an analysis of cost factors of the 25 largest school districts in California in effectively implementing compensatory education programs in both reading and mathematics in four or more grade levels. Numerous statistical data are given. Some districts reported a month-for-month…

This report describes a program for decreasing student underachievement. The targeted population consisted of two German classes at the third- and fourth-year levels in a high school in a suburb of a major metropolitan area. Persistent student underachievement was documented through homework percentages, participation percentages, overall grades,…

This essay, one in a series about the priorities of the professoriate, seeks to explore variations on standard tenure practices that might be advantageous to the interests of both faculty and the institutions by proposing three modifications to traditional policies. The first, tenure by objectives, involves reconfiguration of the probationary…

This manual offers guidance on the use of the Alternate Portfolio Assessment Process to evaluate outcomes of Kentucky students with severe disabilities. Portfolios are intended to showcase student work and allow performance-based evaluation across life domain activities. Criteria for determining eligibility of students with disabilities for this…